Migrating Lilacs

While I was away from home something very interesting happened.

I found three baby lilac trees growing of their own accord. Two in the dirt by the struggling mama tree, and a third, several feet away in a planter, on my patio!

Remember how I had mentioned in a recent blog how I was so covetous of those three starts I had barely made grow after waiting for almost a year? How I planted them, and they soon perished by undeveloped root? All that effort on my part, and it came to nothing.

Now just a few weeks later God goes and makes some Himself, fully functional with working roots and beautiful, healthy leaves.

Duh; I’m dumbfounded. What are you trying to say to me God?

James is a good book for the double-minded. I have been one as you know, lately. It says “You want something but don’t get it. You kill and covet, but you cannot have what you want. You do not have, because you do not ask God. When you ask, you do not receive because you ask with wrong motives, that you may spend what you get on your pleasures. Come near to God, and he will come near to you. Wash your hands, you sinners, and purify your hearts, you double-minded. Humble yourselves before the Lord, and he will lift you up.” 4:2-10

There is a good part of who I am that doesn’t need God right here, right now, in order to do what is right. But the only way I can see my own desires fulfilled, or another words, see those whom I care for around me take deep root in God to see His goodness, is if I submit my desires to His own pre-accomplishment. I will never make anything enduring unless I decide to walk straight ahead through this fire of being made humble, and clean, with a sole traveling companion of my faith in who He is.

It was the right decision back then a few weeks ago to choose to let my gardening laurels rest on His mercy, as a sign to me for my overall effort as His child. I now see these babies and I remember that He can do anything He wishes to, and so much more effortlessly than I ever dreamed. People say that faith without works is dead. But I find the work of “end-of-my-rope -- faith” the most difficult effort God has set out for me. What did James say above? He said ‘you do not have because you do not ask God. Humble yourselves before the Lord, and He will lift you up.’

Blooming season for lilac trees has now come and gone even before I left on vacation. There were no blooms on my struggling little mama tree, and I know this because I trimmed it back during the times when the blooms usually come out. And that is the most wonderful part of all, because I wonder, how did “coincidence” make three babies with neither a flower’s, nor an adjacent root’s mode, of reproduction??

Three to replace the three I failed to make by myself, these superior ones coming according to my submitted desires in Him: “Every good and perfect gift comes from above ....”

And I am encouraged for my future. Thank you, Lord.